


The Horns of Elfland

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Wednesday One-Shots [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Elves, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:19:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3853891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry couldn’t even get a bloody splinter without it turning into something that affected his life and made him crave a mate. And that mate was Draco Malfoy, which only meant the universe had it in for him. Wasn’t Voldemort enough for one lifetime?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> his is in response to a request by aether_sprite, who wanted Harry as a creature that craves the mate, Draco rejecting him at first, and a pining Harry. The title comes from Tennyson’s poem The Princess. This story will have four parts.

Harry stared at his hand. Then he stared at the mirror. Then he stared back at his hand.  
  
He supposed he should be more concerned about what was happening to his face, but really, his hand was about the limit of what he could deal with right now.  
  
Harry had been serving detention in the Forbidden Forest for throwing a firework into Blaise Zabini’s cauldron. McGonagall had scolded him, saying that students who had been through a war and were older than most seventh-year students were when they left school should be beyond such pranks.  
  
Well, Harry also thought older students who had survived such a war should be beyond calling each other “Mudbloods,” but apparently Zabini wasn’t. Therefore, Harry got to be immature in response.  
  
There had been an incident when Harry put his hand on a tree as he leaned around it to scrape off some fungi that Slughorn apparently needed for one of his potions, and something had stabbed him neatly in the skin between his thumb and the next finger. But when Harry had pulled his hand back and looked, it had just been a little embedded grey splinter. He had pulled it out and forgotten about it.  
  
Now…  
  
There was a soft glow around his hair, which made it seem as though it had blue-black shadows in it or something. There was more than a hint of a point to his ears. He had fingers that had gone so long and slender and white he knew Dudley would be laughing at him about being a pansy if he was here.  
  
And his eyes now had slit pupils, and there was a sort of soft glow to his skin, too.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. He knew what he looked like. He also knew that it was probably the splinter’s fault, unless Voldemort had laid some curse that was supposed to break out and make him look like this. And he also knew that elves like this weren’t supposed to exist in the wizarding world. It was house-elves or nothing. Or fairies, he supposed, but that wasn’t on, either. He wasn’t small, for one thing.  
  
At least, he didn’t think so. He opened one eye to check suspiciously on his height, which had finally got to be normal during the last year, and sighed.  
  
Then he went to find Hermione.  
  
*  
  
“It would be easier if you’d kept the splinter from the tree,” Hermione said, for approximately the thousandth and sixty-third time.  
  
“Give it a  _rest,_ Hermione,” Ron said, and since they had got together, he did appear to be able to say that without causing an immediate row. He leaned forwards across the breakfast table. They were there, had been there for the past half-hour, with Harry under a glamour and Hermione holding a heavy book on her lap. “Besides, you wouldn’t be looking like that if you hadn’t found an answer. I know that gleam in your eyes.”  
  
Hermione fell silent with a little blush. Harry sighed as he watched them. He wished he’d felt the urge to get back together with Ginny at any point since the war ended. He wished that he could find  _someone_ attractive. His chest monster appeared to have gone back into hiding.  
  
And now, who knew what would happen if he touched or kissed someone with his ridiculous…elfness.  
  
“I was  _going to say_ ,” Hermione said, with a prim little sniff, “you keeping the splinter would have made things easier, but it’s not impossible.” She turned the book around so Harry could read it. “You’ve been hearing a soft, distant noise, haven’t you? Would you say it was like horns?”  
  
Harry stared at her. Then he remembered that he shouldn’t be so amazed this was  _Hermione,_ and nodded a little. “Yeah,” he said. “What kind of symptom is it?”  
  
“You’re hearing the horns of Elfland, apparently,” Hermione said, and tapped the book. Harry leaned down to read, absent-mindedly reaching up to adjust his glasses before he remembered that they were a glamour. His eyesight wasn’t  _perfect_ —for one thing, he seemed to notice a lot of little things that he never did before, like the glow of sunlight through windows, that could distract him now—but he could read without glasses.  
  
 _When an elf first manifests, they may hear the horns of Elfland. This is a sign that their own spiritual nature, wrenched from Elfland and placed in the real, mortal world, is in need of a chosen—or a ‘mate,’ as vulgar humans may term it. The mate will be the one whose aura blows a horn in tune with the one the elf is hearing._  
  
Harry shuddered a little. Yes, all right, he was probably an elf if he had…elf-ness. He only wished the book had chosen a different way to phrase it.  
  
“And what happens without the mate?” he asked, leaning back in his chair as Hermione picked up the book again. “Do I keel over and die? Do I start transforming into something even more elf-like? And how can this world be less real than the elven one?” he added, frowning as he thought about it. How did  _that_ work?  
  
“I don’t know the immediate answer to that last question,” said Hermione, and Harry gave her an unimpressed stare. He knew the meaning of that kind of evasive answer: she  _did_ know some of the answers to the rest. A second later, Hermione gave in with a soft sigh and nodded. “Yes. There’s a negative consequence to not finding your mate. You’ll begin to fade from existence. Elves are divided into a physical body and a spiritual—or I suppose you could call it fey—essence. If you don’t have a mate to ground you, then the fey essence goes back to Elfland, and your body simply fades.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes, feeling nauseated. “How could a splinter have caused this?” he whispered.  
  
“I’m afraid it was elf-shot.” Hermione looked apologetic when Harry opened his eyes and gazed at her again—which she should, because Harry had no idea what she meant. “Like small arrows that elves usually shoot at people. Or leave behind, in this case. It must have latched onto you when it sensed a potential human victim passing, and, well. This is what happens.” She opened her hand towards Harry with a small, apologetic grimace.   
  
Harry buried his head in his hands. “I suppose there’s no geographical limit on this mate?” he muttered into them. “It could be someone who lives countries away, or who’s already dead, or—”  
  
“No,” said Hermione firmly. “It will be someone at Hogwarts. Elf-shot doesn’t function very well when it gets far away from its point of origin. You’re—well, I suppose you could say that you’ll start to feel more comfortable in the Forbidden Forest, because it’s that particular piece of elf-shot’s point of origin. And you’ll find your mate somewhere in the vicinity, too.”  
  
“I suppose it might be a centaur or something like that?” Harry was trying to sound as calm as he could, even though what he really wanted was to scream and tear his hair out. When he saw the way Ron paled, he snorted a little. Yeah, he was pretty sure he was the calmer out of the two of them, and Ron didn’t even have to face the fact that he had a mate out there.  
  
“No,” said Hermione slowly. “Centaurs are magical beings themselves, not humans. From what I read, elf-shot transforms humans into elves, so they need a human mate.”  
  
Harry tried to subject that to analysis, and then gave up with a weary wave of his hand. “All right,” he said. “Then you think I should—what? Wander around and listen?”  
  
“I’m afraid that’s all you can do for right now,” said Hermione, and gave him an apologetic glance.  
  
“Listen to Ginny first, mate,” was Ron’s unhelpful advice. “You know that she’s been wanting to get back together with you since—”  
  
“ _I know_ ,” Harry said between gritted teeth, and got up to go to Potions. He reckoned Professor Slughorn would want him to attend class, if only so he could chide Harry for letting his skills “slip,” whether Harry was turning into an elf or not.  
  
*  
  
Becoming fey, as Hermione insisted on referring to it whenever they were alone and she was trying to pester Harry into talking about it, was  _weird_.  
  
Harry could see molecules when he really concentrated. He didn’t often, because the image of them swarming all over pieces of paper or whatever he was looking at gave him a headache. He could smell things that he’d never smelled before, which resulted in him nearly gagging to death when they had to make a potion using bubotuber pus, and going into a cacophony of sneezes when Neville, sitting next to him, started eating some especially smelly cheese.  
  
The only advantage of his sensitive nose was that he was making fewer mistakes in Potions than he had since he’d got rid of Snape’s book. He  _knew_ when something wasn’t supposed to go into the potion right then, because he knew what a correct potion should smell like from sniffing Hermione’s or Malfoy’s cauldrons.  
  
And he could hear new things, oh yes.  
  
It started about two days after Hermione told him he’d have to listen for his mate. Soft, welling sounds started to play around him. It startled him badly enough that he did ruin one potion dropping in a huge glopping handful of kelp, but then he realized that the noise was jangling and coming from Hermione’s aura.  
  
And it set his teeth on edge.  
  
“What’s the matter?” Hermione whispered to him, and Harry gave her a sickly smile as his only answer, which luckily she seemed to understand at once. “Oh, it’s starting?” She paused for a breathless second, and added, “It’s not me, is it?”  
  
Harry gave a quick shake of his head. No, it wasn’t her. Honestly, if it was he would have committed himself to fading. Hermione and Ron deserved the happiness they had found after the war, and he knew Hermione had never felt that way about Harry himself.  
  
“Oh, thank God,” Hermione said, and then flushed. “I mean—I would have done my best to honor—”  
  
“I know,” said Harry. “No, it’s not you. You said it was supposed to sound like horns? Hunting horns?”  
  
Hermione nodded, and lowered her voice as Professor Slughorn peered at them from the front of the classroom. “Yes. High and faint and sweet, that’s what the book said. But with a little bit of a wild tone.”  
  
“I suppose I’ll know it when I hear it,” Harry muttered. He wasn’t looking forward to a whole week, or month, or more, of discordant music.  
  
*  
  
It was worse than that, Harry found. It was a deafening orchestra.  
  
Some people jangled, like Hermione. Some clanged, like Neville, who in Harry’s perception was now constantly accompanied by a chorus of invisible cymbals. Ginny’s aura sounded like flutes, which made it a relief to be near her, but it definitely wasn’t hunting horns, and Harry tried not to be near her too often. She still threw him hopeful looks when she thought he wasn’t looking back.  
  
What there definitely  _weren’t,_  were hunting horns.  
  
Harry stared into the mirror a month after he had first begun to change, and studied his face without the glamour. Was the glow paler, softer? Had he started fading? He had no idea. He had to say that he didn’t look human without the glamour, but he had no idea if his face was actually more transparent than it had been the month before…  
  
Or if that was only his imagination.  
  
Harry sighed, reapplied the glamour, and went down to breakfast.  
  
He had come without Hermione, for once, or Ron (drums being played so loudly it was hard to hear his voice). Only a few students from other Houses were there, mostly Ravenclaws. Harry chewed his breakfast and stared at his hands.   
  
He knew he should be thinking about what he was going to do after Hogwarts. Could he still be an Auror? Could he get the NEWTS that would let him do anything else? What did he want to do besides be an Auror?  
  
But he simply couldn’t focus his mind. Besides, for all he knew, being an elf might kill him before then.  
  
He had chomped his way through a bowl of porridge that tasted as unappetizing as bark when he heard it. A distant, soft sound of hunting horns. Harry jerked his head up and turned around, staring.   
  
He thought the sound would fade, for a moment; that blasted book of Hermione’s had also said that sometimes elves wanted the sign of their “true mate” to be real so badly that they could hallucinate the horns. But it kept sounding, drawing nearer, and Harry scanned the room rapidly, hopefully.  
  
He mostly saw students whose music he already heard, though. Maybe it was someone approaching the door of the Great Hall? Harry turned to look.  
  
Draco Malfoy stepped through them.  
  
And the horns rang as loudly as though a whole hunt was riding right past Harry.  
  
Harry buried his head in his hands.  
  
 _Yeah, the universe likes to fuck with me._


	2. Part Two

“I found the person who sounds like hunting horns,” Harry told his hands as he sat beside Hermione in Potions that morning. They were the only ones in the classroom. Hermione always wanted to get there early in case the world ended and she could only read her Potions book one more time, Harry supposed, and she was always inviting Harry to go with her. She seemed pleased he’d accepted that morning.  
  
Hermione put down the book and paid attention to him at once. “Who is it?” she whispered excitedly.  
  
Harry started to answer, and then paused. He hadn’t realized it until now, but Hermione’s sound, the jangling tune, was gone.   
  
He was almost hopeful until he remembered another part of the book she had found about elves, and sighed.  _When the noise of the horns of Elfland touches the ears of an elf exiled in the mortal world, he will cease to notice other music._  
  
“You’re not going to like this,” Harry said, and scrubbed his fingers through his hair for a moment.  
  
“I would like anyone who could stop you from fading,” said Hermione, and now her voice was sharp. “Your skin is a bit more shiny and translucent than usual, have you noticed? I don’t want to see you go to Elfland.”  
  
Harry started and glanced down at his hand. As a matter of fact, he  _hadn’t_ noticed. It had only seemed as though he hadn’t picked up a tan. Staring hard at his wrist, he didn’t think he could see his veins and bones any better than usual.  
  
“ _Anyway_.” Hermione was almost bouncing in her chair. “Who is it?”  
  
Harry grimaced. “Draco Malfoy.”  
  
Hermione froze in mid-bounce, mouth open, which was pretty impressive, Harry thought. He reached out after a moment, the impulse irresistible, and gently touched Hermione’s mouth closed.  
  
Hermione plopped back into her chair and considered things for a moment, shaking her head. Harry nodded. He suspected that the sheer incredulity of everything was overcoming her. What the fuck was he supposed to do  _now_?  
  
But Hermione said something else a moment later, something that hadn’t even come up in Harry’s thoughts of how it could be  _Malfoy_ that would keep him here. “Are you even gay?”  
  
Harry stared at her. “ _What_?” he asked a second later. “What does that matter?”  
  
“I just wondered if it might be part of why you never got back together with Ginny.” Hermione blushed a little when Harry stared at her, but defiantly kept her head high. “After all, if you had figured out that you preferred boys—men—then you’d want to stay away from her and not give her false hope.”  
  
“I don’t—it doesn’t matter—” Harry began, and then considered something he hadn’t even considered in the stress of finding out that he’d have to speak to Malfoy about this and he’d have to spend the rest of his life with Malfoy.  
  
He’d have to have  _sex_ with Malfoy.  
  
Harry let his head fall into his hands.  
  
“Yes, I suppose it might be possible for elves to have mates of the same sex when they’re not gay,” Hermione murmured, sounding sympathetic. “Their primary purpose is to keep you from fading, after all.” She patted Harry’s hand. “Still, I’ll look it up and see if that means you have to have sex with him.”  
  
“You’d do that?” Harry put his head up. He knew how much Hermione liked researching, but on the other hand, this had to be embarrassing for her. “Thank you, Hermione!”  
  
She gave him a gentle smile, and then paused when Harry turned his head. “What is it?”  
  
 _It’s hunting horns drawing near the classroom, that’s all._  Harry wished he could give a reply as light and humorous as that. He bit his lip and smiled at her. “He’s coming. I can hear it.”  
  
“Oh, of course.” Hermione nodded. “Have you told him yet?”  
  
Harry fidgeted.  
  
“You  _have_ to, Harry!” Hermione reached out and clutched his hand for a second. “You know you have to, right?”  
  
“Well, of course,” Harry said, and found some relief in rolling his eyes. “I mean, I can hardly go up to him and start kissing him or something without an explanation.”  
  
“But are you going to do it soon?”  
  
Harry hesitated again, and peeked over his shoulder as Malfoy entered the Potions classroom. Honestly, nothing about him spoke at all to the soft, haunting tones that the hunting horns were playing, Harry thought in irritation. Why did  _he_ have to have something that sounded like that? Harry would have been happier if the jangling music was his and not Hermione’s, even if that meant he would have to listen to it for the rest of his life.  
  
Malfoy saw him staring and gave him a strange look. Harry bit his lip and turned furiously away, concentrating on his cauldron as though Slughorn was already there and had given them the instructions for the potion. Hermione leaned over and murmured in a voice so low there was no chance Malfoy could hear, “You’ll have to tell him soon.”  
  
“I know! I just have to find the right—the right place,” Harry finished, inspired. “You know the middle of the Potions classroom isn’t the right place.”  
  
“It probably isn’t,” Hermione agreed, and gave him one more look before she waved her wand and Summoned the book on elves she’d shown him before. She immediately began flipping through it, and Harry settled back in his chair with a resigned sigh, trying to get used to the feeling of his fingers—which were still longer in reality even though they looked as normal as ever under the glamour—on the stirring rod and tapping on the table. He didn’t feel like  _himself_.  
  
And he tried to ignore, as well, the persistent soft calling of the horns from behind his shoulder, and how they sounded wild and longing.  
  
*  
  
The right place wasn’t the Great Hall at lunch, either. Or the Quidditch pitch, where he saw Malfoy riding his broom alone. Or Defense, which was taught by a witch who seemed absent-minded about marking their homework but always noticed someone whispering in her class. Or dinner, either.  
  
Harry held up his hand in front of the mirror in the bathroom that night in Gryffindor Tower, when he was sure that the rest of the boys were asleep, and released the glamour. Immediately he felt as if his vision had become keener and brighter, and he could make out that the points to his ears, which had been small at first, had grown incredibly sharper in the last little while.  
  
But he could also make out that the skin of his hand was shining as though it was made of paper and someone had a light behind it.  
  
Harry swallowed and restored the glamour. He supposed he would have to take the chance of speaking with Malfoy tomorrow. The thought of spending the rest of his life with someone who hated him was horrible. The notion of having sex with Malfoy was—awful.  
  
But he had to at least try. Because the thought of fading was worse.  
  
*  
  
“Malfoy? Can I talk to you a minute?”  
  
Harry knew he had utterly failed to sound casual and normal. Or suave and compelling, for the matter, which would have been his second choice. Still, Malfoy stopped walking ahead of him and turned around with a blank expression on his face. Blank was better than threatening.  
  
“What, Potter?” he asked as Harry came nearer. His eyebrows curled up his face as Harry raised privacy charms around them, but he didn’t start spitting with anger or run away, which Harry thought was a positive sign.  
  
In fact, now that Harry was close to him, he looked…well, different. Not that he had started to change into an elf, the way Harry had, but his features were diamond-sharp instead of just pointed, and he had clearer grey eyes than Harry had thought, eyes that could see beneath surfaces. Malfoy narrowed them even as Harry watched and the horns sighed around them.  
  
“You’re wearing a glamour,” Malfoy said.  
  
Harry nodded and waved his wand to release it. He supposed he could have tried explaining, but he thought having Malfoy see what was happening to him would be a clearer illustration.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes widened, and for just a second, Harry thought he would hurry away; he certainly pressed his back against the wall as if he meant to do that. But then he shook his head and stepped up to Harry, reaching out one hand towards his hair while he gave Harry a cautious glance.  
  
“Can I touch?” he asked.  
  
Harry nodded. He assumed that Malfoy meant to touch one of his pointed ears, and, well, that was all right with him. The tone of the horns was so loud and sweet that it was drowning out everything else, including the thoughts that said sleeping with Malfoy or telling him the truth wasn’t a good idea.  
  
But Malfoy’s fingers only spent a moment tracing the point of his ear; then they sank into his hair, and Harry tilted his head back and gave a full-body shiver. That was so, so wonderful, all the touching Malfoy was doing. It ached and spread through him, a tingle that made soft, colored impressions dance upon the back of his closed eyelids.  
  
He breathed in and out, and saw again the image of the leaping Fiendfyre, and the way he had flown with Malfoy over it. At least Malfoy had known what was good for him then, and hadn’t made any attempt to hurt or “capture” Harry while they were flying. Harry couldn’t say that the good sense would be repeated if they had to do it again, but he thought so. Malfoy really had got some sensible ideas in that head of his, more sensible than Harry had thought he was.  
  
“Potter?”  
  
The daze snapped, along with any further visions that Harry might have seen. He opened his eyes and gazed at Malfoy, who had stepped back and was leaning against the wall again, with a neutral face.  
  
“What?” Harry whispered. His throat ached.  
  
“What did you show this to me for?”  
  
Harry took a deep breath. He hoped this would sound as sensible as he had just been thinking Malfoy had been in the Room of Hidden Things, but then again, Malfoy had grown up in the wizarding world. Maybe he had heard of this before. “I got hurt by some elf-shot in the Forbidden Forest. I’m turning into an elf. And I’m going to fade unless I find my true mate.” He held up his hand and showed Malfoy the glimmering ghostliness of his skin. “I can find my mate by hearing a sound like hunting horns around them.” He looked at Malfoy expectantly.  
  
It took longer for Malfoy to grasp it than Harry had thought he would. He narrowed his eyes as though he was listening for the hunting horns himself, and then abruptly leaped to the side and lifted his hands like he was pressing on a fence.  
  
“No.”  
  
“What?” Harry breathed the word. He had to admit, that had been his own reaction when he had realized Malfoy was the source of the hunting horns, but he had never thought it would be Malfoy’s.  
  
“I just barely have my own life back.” Malfoy’s eyes were still narrow, but now his face had flushed, and he was panting furiously. “I barely have my freedom. It’s only because you testified and shit.” He waved a hand at Harry. “I would give a lot to repay the life-debts I owe you, but the one thing I won’t give is my life.”  
  
“I wouldn’t make you die,” Harry said, a little shocked. He wondered if Malfoy had misinterpreted what Harry was asking him for, and he stepped forwards with one hand soothingly extended. “I only want you to keep me from fading.”  
  
Malfoy looked him full in the face. “And you want me to share your life. Your bed.”  
  
Harry hadn’t put it in those terms even to himself, but he knew he was flushed enough as it was right now. He nodded shortly.   
  
Malfoy closed his eyes and hissed in something that looked like pain before he shook his head. “No,” he said. “And no again. I would give up a lot, Potter, but not my life. Not my _self_. And not my freedom.”  
  
“I’m not asking that much.” To Harry’s horror, he could hear his voice cracking. “We wouldn’t have to stay around each other or sleep together or see each other much. Just—just enough to keep me from fading.”  
  
“No.” Malfoy’s voice was steadier now. “I’m sorry you’re turning into an elf. I’m sorry you have to deal with this. But I’m no self-sacrificing Gryffindor. You’re—you’re a hero. You figure out someone who wants to be with you because they’re heroic. That’s the way it’ll have to be.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to continue arguing again, only to see Malfoy striding away.  
  
Harry would have said something, but he couldn’t. Malfoy’s turned back was too eloquent, and he had a jerkiness in his movements that said he wouldn’t return no matter how much Harry begged him to.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and touched one hand to his head. He wanted to scream. He wanted to go find Hermione and explain that she was wrong and things  _hadn’t_ worked out. He wanted to find whatever elf had planted that bit of elf-shot in the Forbidden Forest and strangle them, if only to see what happened.  
  
But for now, he had his own fading to attend to.  
  
He turned and walked towards Gryffindor Tower. At least he didn’t break into a run until he was halfway there.  
  
*  
  
“It didn’t work out? Oh,  _Harry_.”  
  
In the end, Harry had had to go and find Hermione and Ron in the library. From the slightly ill look Ron gave him, Hermione had told him the truth about Malfoy being Harry’s mate, but he reached out and bravely patted Harry’s arm anyway.  
  
“I knew he was a right bastard,” Ron muttered. “But I didn’t think he would try to avoid helping someone  _survive_.”  
  
“He was probably afraid of what it would cost him.” Hermione watched Harry with shrewd eyes as he collapsed into the chair and stared down at his hands, trying to judge how much they’d gone transparent since this morning. He thought that his fingernails, at least, looked a little dimmer, despite his reapplied glamour. “That was it, wasn’t it?”  
  
Harry just glanced up and nodded without moving his head much.   
  
“Yes, I thought so,” Hermione muttered, and opened the book in front of her wider, flipping through the pages for a minute. “I don’t know what the elf-magic was thinking of, choosing him. But I found something that might help.”  
  
“Oh, good,” said Harry, and ignored the way Hermione frowned at him. Yes, he knew he didn’t sound enthusiastic. Well, neither would you if it turned out that your one chance of having a normal life, or a life at all, had walked away because it was too much trouble to help you.   
  
“No, really,” said Hermione. “You can persuade someone else to be your mate. It says so right here. But you can only do it if your first mate rejects you. That’s why you couldn’t do it until you heard the horns.” She turned the book around, and Harry glanced listlessly down the page of pictures. They mostly seemed to be of trees.  
  
Harry finally found a picture that he thought must be what Hermione was talking about. There was one tree that had a huge bole, and at the foot of it stood an elf—Harry could tell by the absurd pale glow that the artist had thought necessary to put around it—holding the hand of a human. Walking away was another human with leaves in his hair and a scowling expression.  
  
The text beneath the picture did say,  _If an elf hears the horns around a mate and desires another mate, he may persuade another to become that mate. He must convince them so within a month of hearing the horns. Otherwise, a quarter of his body will fade, and so on each month that passes since he first heard the horns._  
  
Harry swallowed. “And I just have to talk to someone else, and explain the situation, and they’ll be my mate? That’s it?”  
  
Hermione shrugged. “And you have to get Malfoy to go through a simple renunciation of his status as your mate. It shouldn’t take long, if what I found was true.”  
  
Harry looked up slowly. The truth was that he had never wanted Malfoy as his mate, and he should have been perfectly relieved that he could find a solution to the whole stupid problem.  
  
The truth was…  
  
He wasn’t attracted to anyone else, either. And someone who agreed to become his mate would probably be really attracted to him. And Harry wasn’t sure that he wanted to lie to someone else and ruin their lives the way his had been ruined.  
  
 _Why could I not put up with that, but I could put up with being bound to Malfoy for the rest of our lives?_  
  
Harry shrugged. “Who do you suggest I choose?”  
  
“I suggest Ginny,” said Ron firmly.  
  
“That wouldn’t be very kind to her, though,” Hermione pointed out. “She was really in love with Harry, and if Harry tells her that he doesn’t love her right now but needs her to keep him from fading—”  
  
“But Ginny’s a Gryffindor,” Ron countered at once. “She’ll know how important this is, and she’ll do it anyway!  _She_ can be a hero.”  
  
 _I’m no self-sacrificing Gryffindor,_ came Malfoy’s words back to Harry.  
  
“No,” said Harry loudly. Both Ron and Hermione turned to him, looking a little startled that he had interrupted their bickering. “Not Ginny. Hermione’s right. It would be unfair to lie to her and pretend I’m in love with her.”  
  
“Who’s asking you to lie?” Ron leaned forwards and poked him in the chest. “Tell her the truth. I think she’ll still want to help.”  
  
“And you might grow to love her later,” said Hermione, nodding. “I think that’s probably true, Harry.” She looked at his translucent hand, and her voice grew softer. “At least, it’s your best chance.”  
  
 _It is,_ Harry told himself firmly.  _The best one. There’s nothing else I can do but accept a different mate. Malfoy walked away. Ginny won’t. And I wasn’t in love with Malfoy. He’ll probably be glad to speak the words of renunciation._  
  
That was what he thought. That was what he told himself.   
  
But his heart still ached and twisted in his chest the way it had since Malfoy had told him no, and he couldn’t catch his breath until almost dinnertime, when he had to avoid looking at the Slytherin table at all.


	3. Part Three

“Can I talk to you, Ginny?”  
  
Harry wondered for a second if Ron had been wrong, if Ginny didn’t want to be with him anymore. The way she turned to him and blinked instead of blushed said that. But then she blushed on cue and stood up from her conversation with two of the Gryffindor fifth-years. “Sure, Harry,” she said, and walked out of the Great Hall with him.  
  
Harry’s hands were shaking, he noticed. He curled them into fists and stuffed them back into his robes. Ginny was walking beside him with her eyes on the floor, except when she glanced at him quickly and then away again.  
  
Harry hated this. He wished the thing with Malfoy had worked out, if only because it would mean never asking anyone on a date again.  
  
 _That’s a stupid reason for wishing it had worked out,_ he told himself abruptly, and turned to hold Ginny’s eyes. She came to a stop and looked around as though wondering why he wanted to talk to her in the middle of a corridor. Harry hastily raised some Privacy Charms. He had talked to Malfoy in almost the same place, so he didn’t think it was so weird.  
  
 _Stop thinking about him,_ he told himself sternly, and whispered, “I’m going to take down a glamour, Ginny. Don’t be startled, all right? It’s still me.”  
  
Ginny stared at him. “Were you trying to hide your scar again? You didn’t do a very good job of it. It’s still right there.”  
  
Harry smiled weakly. If Ginny could make him laugh, then maybe she  _would_ be a good choice for a mate. He waved his wand and canceled the glamour, and then leaned back against the wall to see what she would do.  
  
Ginny frankly gaped for a moment or two, then shook her head as though waking up from a nap. “What are you?”  
  
“I’m turning into an elf,” Harry said. “I got scraped by elf-shot in the Forbidden Forest.” He nodded a little grimly when he saw the way Ginny’s eyes turned to him. “Yeah, I know. If it was going to happen to anyone, it would have to happen to me.”  
  
Ginny’s lips twitched, but she still looked concerned. “And that means what? What does it have to do with me?” She was blushing again, but also looking at Harry’s newly-pointed ears and glowing eyes as if they fascinated her.  
  
 _At least she doesn’t think I’m ugly_. “Elves need mates, or they start fading because their essence is going back to Elfland,” Harry explained. “Some other world. I wondered if you would…”  
  
“No.” Ginny stuffed her fist against her mouth a moment later, and blushed more vividly than ever, but shook her head. “Harry, I  _can’t_.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes. “You can’t?” He knew his voice sounded dead, and maybe that was unfair, but that was the way he felt. Ginny had been his best hope, and he  _had_ hoped, so much, from hearing what Ron and Hermione said, that she liked him well enough to go through with this and they would find love later. Harry ought to fall in love with someone who loved him back, right? Which would never happen with Malfoy.  
  
 _Stop_ thinking  _about him_.  
  
“I care about you too much,” Ginny whispered. “I would do almost anything to help you, but…” Harry opened his eyes and found that her eyes were clouded with tears. “I want to do it because you need help that wouldn’t be  _permanent_. I can’t just consent to become your mate and hope you’ll love me back someday.” She paused. “Besides, most of the time elves don’t choose their own mates, do they? I’ve read enough stories about them to know that.”  
  
“I don’t know,” said Harry, startled into the simple truth. “I haven’t read any stories about elves. I only know this much about them because I started turning into one and then Hermione looked them up for me.”  
  
Ginny pinned him with a considering glance. “Who’s your real mate?”  
  
Harry flushed. “It doesn’t matter. They refused to have anything to do with me. And as long as I can get them to renounce me—which they will—then I can choose my own.” He reached out appealingly. “Ginny, please?”  
  
“It’s not  _fair_ ,” Ginny said. “Not to me, and not to you. I would do it if you loved me, Harry. But you just need someone else, and you don’t even really care who it is.” Her eyes were wide and aching. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have waited this long.”  
  
Harry winced. “I did find a true mate, and he did reject me. That much is true.”  
  
“But?”  
  
“Ron was the one who thought that maybe you would go along with this because you were in love with me and I could fall in love with time,” Harry whispered. His chest still hurt. He wondered dully if that was a sign that he was fading. “And I’ll simply fade out of existence if I don’t have…someone to hold me here.”  
  
Ginny hesitated for a long moment. Then she said, “If you’re almost gone and you still need someone, then I’ll do it, Harry. I don’t want to see you die.” She stepped up and kissed him on the cheek. “But I don’t want to see either of us trapped in a loveless marriage, or mating, either.”  
  
She gave him a sad look and stepped back, passing out of the sphere of the privacy charms before Harry could decide if he wanted to call to her. Harry sighed and leaned against the wall, rubbing his eyes with one hand.  
  
“Already moving on, Potter?”  
  
The voice made Harry start violently enough that he almost fell to the floor. He spun around and saw Malfoy standing down the corridor. His arms were folded, and he was sneering. He hadn’t done much of that this year so far, but Harry supposed it didn’t matter; when Malfoy  _did_ have a chance of making Harry’s life hell, then he was always going to go back to that.  
  
“I have to,” said Harry dully. “I have to find someone who can keep me from fading, since you’re not going to be my mate.” He straightened up and shook his head then, remembering what else he needed Malfoy to do. “And you have to make a formal renunciation.”  
  
“Of what?” Malfoy’s eyelids flickered fast enough that Harry wondered if he had blinked. “I never agreed to anything that I had to renounce.”  
  
“Of your status as my mate,” Harry said, keeping his voice as calm as possible. “That way, I can still choose someone else.”  
  
“You’d like that, of course,” said Malfoy. “If Girl-Weasley won’t oblige you, you’ll find someone else you can raise a pack of half-elven brats with and someone you can reminisce about Gryffindor with.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said tiredly. Was being an elf going to be passed on to his children as well? He had to admit he hadn’t thought about that. On the other hand, he also thought Hermione would have mentioned it if there was a real possibility. “But a Gryffindor is probably going to be my only option. Anyway. You have to appear at the bonding ritual and speak the formal words of renunciation. I’ll let you know when it’s going to be.”  
  
“If I don’t  _want_ to appear on your schedule and do something that might disoblige me? If I have exams the same day that might help me get into the Ministry, or if I want to spend time with my friends instead of someone forced on me by magic?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes openly, not caring whether Malfoy saw it. “Why would you want to delay something that’s going to benefit you as much as it is me? You say the words, you’ll be free.” A sharp ache sliced into his chest, and he closed his eyes and rubbed his scar again, by sheer force of habit.   
  
“And you won’t,” said Malfoy. “Because you’ll still have a  _mate_ that you have to hold onto, to keep from fading.” He cleared his throat. “If you still believe that. I’m half-convinced it’s a lie you made up to try and persuade me to be your mate.”  
  
“Go read the books yourself if you’re so bothered, Malfoy,” Harry snapped, and stalked past him, banging one shoulder against his. Malfoy squawked and started to say something, but Harry gave him a glare that rendered him speechless. Harry nodded sharply and moved past him down the corridor.  
  
 _Good_. Malfoy should have at least a little discomfort and inconvenience out of the whole thing, considering what more Harry was going to have.  
  
And Harry…well, he needed to find a mate. He understood what Ginny was saying, but in the face of dying because he was fading like a sodding  _shadow_ , he was pretty sure he would end up begging her for help after all.  
  
*  
  
Harry leaned back in his seat, staring up and down the Gryffindor table, trying to figure out who he could approach next. He didn’t know most of the Gryffindor girls at all, he thought. Well, he at least knew some of their names, but that wasn’t the same as  _knowing_ them. And he doubted that most of them would be willing to abruptly give up whatever plans and dreams they might have to bond with him. And the ones who were willing…  
  
 _I don’t know if I could put up with someone who only wants to be my mate for the fame, even if that kept me from death._  
  
Harry sighed. Which didn’t leave a lot of choices, he had to admit. He turned and looked down the table again, this time at the Gryffindor boys.  
  
 _Am I gay? Is there a reason that the magic chose a male mate for me?_ Harry sighed again.  _But I would still have the same problem even if I am. Choosing someone who only wants to be with me because it gets his name in the papers isn’t any better than choosing someone who wants_ her  _name in the papers._  
  
He reached absently for his fork, and started, looking down a second later. It seemed as though someone had moved the fork from its usual resting position, and he hadn’t even noticed who’d done it.  
  
Then he realized that the fork was still in its usual position. What had happened was his hand passing straight through it.  
  
Harry made a grab again for the fork before he could restrain himself. This time, he managed to take hold of it, and wriggled his shoulders to try and relieve the tension. He hadn’t faded.  
  
 _Not yet_.  
  
But sooner or later, if enough things like that happened, then people would start noticing that something was off with him, glamour or no glamour. Harry shut his eyes and brushed his fingers against his scar again. He would almost rather have Voldemort back again than this to deal with, at least if he could have made it so that Voldemort would only affect him.  
  
 _I wish I knew someone I could ask. Someone who already liked me enough to consider it, but not enough to be in love with me. Someone who wouldn’t want the fame. Someone who knows a little of what I’m really like and could accept it as more revelations leaked out._  
  
Harry scratched his scar. If he had thought there was the slightest chance that Neville was gay and liked him, then he would have asked Neville. But Neville had eyes only for Hannah Abbot these days, and Harry  _would_ rather die than condemn someone who was already in love to sharing this loveless existence with him.  
  
His ears tingled and vibrated for a second. Harry looked up at the same moment as he reached up to touch them, wondering if this was some new phase of his illness, and found Malfoy staring at him from across the room. He sneered and looked away pointedly when he saw Harry considering him.  
  
Harry sneered back and stood, legs clenched so that he wouldn’t simply bolt from the room. It looked as though he was going to have to start considering people from other Houses, as well.  
  
And that did make one choice come to mind. Harry considered it, then shrugged.  _Worth a try. That’s all I can say._  
  
*  
  
“I’m flattered you would think of me, Harry. Elves are very choosy. I met one that told me all about it.”  
  
Harry sighed and leaned back against a tree. It did make him feel more comfortable to be at the very edge of the Forbidden Forest, under its eaves. He made sure that he didn’t touch the bark with his bare skin, though. With his luck, he’d scrape himself on something else, and end up turning into another hideous creature. “That’s a no, though, right, Luna?”  
  
“It is.” Luna smiled at him. “I would have to stay with you, or you would have to travel with me. And I don’t think Crumple-Horned Snorkacks like elves.”  
  
Harry stared out across the lake. He could see Hagrid standing on the other shore, showing something blue-green and gleaming that was half in and half out of the water to a group of curious students. Harry swallowed. He wished with all his might that he was standing in that group and had nothing more to worry about than his marks.  
  
“I would help you if I could be your mate,” Luna went on seriously, drawing Harry’s attention back to her. “And if the Snorkacks liked elves. But I’m not your mate. Why don’t you find the mate that has horns sounding around them?”  
  
Harry started a little, but then relaxed. It made sense that Luna, of all people, would know some of the more obscure magical creature lore. “I found him. Draco Malfoy,” he added, when Luna stared at him with the eerie patience that Professor Flitwick sometimes used when he thought someone just needed one more try to get the Charm right. “He said that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life tied to something when he was just now free.”  
  
Luna considered that, then waved a hand. “But that’s silly. He would be freer than ever if he was your mate. He would get to see Elfland in his dreams and travel with you to it if he wanted to.” She brightened up. “I’d like to go to Elfland.”  
  
“Would he?” Harry asked, startled. That hadn’t been in the book. “I didn’t know elves and their mates could do that.”  
  
Luna looked at him patiently. “Your inner essence is fading because it wants to return to Elfland,” she said. “How can you soothe it if you don’t go there sometimes? Of course, you could wear a necklace of noodles,” she added then. “But I don’t think you want to do that. They don’t last for long, and they’re inconvenient when you have to keep replacing them all the time.”  
  
Harry pictured himself trying to tell Malfoy about journeys to Elfland, and snorted. “No offense, Luna, but I don’t think Malfoy is going to be my mate no matter what. And I don’t want to bribe someone into it.”  
  
“I understand.” Luna took his hand. “It’s so nice to have friends who don’t want something from you.”  
  
Harry nodded, and tried to relax and pretend that he could feel her fingers on his hand in the same way he’d always been able to, instead of distant and drifting sensations that flickered in and out of his awareness. “Yes, it is.”  
  
*  
  
The facts that Luna had mentioned about Elfland were in the book, Harry found out, when he borrowed the tome and returned to the lake later that week. Hermione had given him an uncomfortably pitying look when he’d had to Levitate the book instead of carrying it. At least once he was out of most people’s sight and down next to the lake, he’d managed to comfortably hold onto it with the aid of a Strengthening Charm cast on his wrists.  
  
Elfland sounded like, well, probably like the wizarding world would have sounded to Harry if someone had described it to him before he came to Hogwarts. There was magic everywhere, apparently. There were magical creatures that lived freely alongside the elves and seemed to help them do most of the things that Muggles achieved with technology. Harry read about dragons that incinerated rubbish and small lizards that licked plates clean and winged dogs that carried the post until his eyes ached. Then he put down the book and rubbed his hand against them.  
  
His eyelids didn’t feel substantial, either.  
  
With a sigh, he leaned forwards over his legs and stared into the lake. He didn’t have any idea why so many people seemed to consider turning into an elf a blessing. Maybe it was if you had a mate who’d secretly been in love with you all along and then they were the same one who sounded like horns, but not the rest of the time.  
  
Hermione had been looking up ways to reverse the transformation, too, but she hadn’t stumbled on anything so far. Harry wondered, for a second, whether getting stabbed with another piece of elf-shot would do. He had found nothing that suggested that would work, but nothing that suggested it wouldn’t, either.  
  
He was about to draw his wand when a voice sneered behind him, “Sitting down here all alone, Potter? Brooding on the impossibility of having me as your mate?”  
  
“Brooding on trying to do something about this,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. Honestly, Malfoy had left him alone for weeks after the start of the year, and he should have been perfectly happy to walk away and leave Harry to fade into nothingness if what he’d said about not wanting to be Harry’s mate was true.  
  
 _Maybe he’s afraid that he only has a limited amount of time left to get his taunts in,_ Harry thought idly.  
  
“You won’t convince someone to mate with you if you simply sit around all the time looking pathetic.” There was a rustling sound in the grass as Malfoy walked a few steps closer. “You have to be out actively  _looking_ for them.”  
  
“You don’t have to worry,” Harry said mildly, still keeping his gaze aimed straight ahead. It seemed to annoy Malfoy when he did that, which was as good a reason as any. “I have someone who’s promised to mate with me if I can’t find someone else, and to do it before I fade completely.”  
  
“The Weasley bint?” Malfoy laughed, and there was something coarse in the sound that Harry hadn’t heard from him in a long time. “Of course, the Great Harry Potter can’t find someone to love him for  _himself,_ can he? The tragic hero.”  
  
Harry decided he was tired of this. Hoping that his hand wouldn’t suddenly dissolve around his wand, he turned it in Malfoy’s direction and muttered, “ _Silencio_.”  
  
Malfoy gasped in the second before the spell hit him. Harry turned around, stood up, and stalked towards him. Malfoy stood staring at him from not far away, his hands shoved into his pockets. They clenched there as Harry approached, but he didn’t try to do anything that would threaten him.  
  
Harry tapped his wand lightly against Malfoy’s chest. “You don’t want to mate with me?” he whispered, and ignored the persistent soft song of hunting horns in his ears. “That’s your right. But you’re being a git about renouncing me, too. And this taunting. There’s no reason for that. You ought to be relieved that we’ll both be out of the situation of  _you_ having to mate with  _me._ ” He pushed Malfoy with the wand one more time. “Stay away from me, don’t taunt Ginny, and make sure that you’re ready to renounce at the right time. Then things will be just bloody  _fine_  between us.”  
  
And off he stalked, leaving Malfoy gaping after him. Harry was tense all the way back up to Hogwarts, expecting a curse to his back at the very least.  
  
But nothing happened. Harry shrugged and relaxed a little as he came into the entrance hall. He reckoned Malfoy must have decided it wasn’t worth it.  
  
With a tinkle, his wand dropped through his fingers.  
  
As he bent over to retrieve it, Harry half-closed his eyes. He hoped that he could get Ginny to reconsider.


	4. Part Four

“Someone’s going to start noticing soon, Harry!” Hermione was leaning so near Harry that Harry was a little worried Slughorn was going to accuse them of cheating. On the other hand, he had probably already hurt his potion by dropping in some ingredients that he didn’t mean to drop in, too soon. His hand had a habit of fading out just when he was ferrying some vital flower petal or something to the cauldron. “You should tell people the truth.”  
  
“I don’t want to be stared at again,” Harry hissed. Slughorn cleared his throat. Harry looked up and smiled politely.  
  
Slughorn stared back with his jaw slowly dropping, which wasn’t something that had happened to Harry before. He seemed to have difficulty taking his gaze away from Harry. When he finally managed, he cleared his throat loudly as he started to move away. “So, class, when you’ve added the heliotrope, you should see your potion turning blue and clear…”  
  
Harry blinked and turned to Hermione. “Do you know what that was about?”  
  
Hermione hesitated, then murmured, “Your eyes are showing through your glamour. And your smile, too.” She wouldn’t look at Harry, and her ears were turning red. “You can almost hypnotize someone when you smile at them.”  
  
“Shit,” Harry muttered. Hermione had told him that would happen, as his body reached out and groped desperately to try and find him a mate and thus survival, but he had assumed he would have more time. He didn’t even have a quarter of his body permanently faded yet, the way the book had said he would.  
  
Hermione didn’t even scold him for language, just looked at him soberly. “Do you want to tell people what’s going on before or  _after_ you turn into a really attractive ghost?”  
  
Harry nodded back. He supposed the stares wouldn’t matter so much if he managed to find one mate who really loved him or liked him enough to consent to live in a loveless mating for a little while.  
  
Maybe he could hold out the attractions of visiting Elfland and fame after all, if it meant that he wouldn’t mind-drug someone into becoming his mate.  
  
“Malfoy’s staring at you,” Hermione told him a few minutes later, when Harry was still trying to figure out a way to announce his elf-ness that wasn’t embarrassing.  
  
“He can fuck off,” said Harry, and turned around and glared, ignoring the scolding for language he did get this time. Malfoy stared at him insolently, then turned back to his potion. Harry shook his head. “He didn’t want to help me, and then he gets all pissed off when I try to find someone else. He probably doesn’t want to renounce being my mate just to keep the power he has over me.”  
  
“Whatever you say, Harry.” Hermione put her hands up in a placating fashion. “So. You’re going to tell people soon?”  
  
Harry let out a long, slow breath as he touched his forehead and realized that he felt nothing beneath his fingers—and not because the rough skin of his scar had faded so much. “Yeah. Reckon I don’t have a choice.”  
  
Hermione said nothing, but Harry did feel the fleeting touch she pressed to his wrist a second later.   
  
*  
  
“Mr. Potter wishes me to make an announcement.” Harry sat back with a grimace when McGonagall’s words sounded from the Head Table. He had decided that announcing it like this, at dinner, was the best way to make sure  _all_ students heard about his predicament and could contribute to a solution.  
  
One slight compensation for the curious gazes washing towards him now was that Malfoy looked absolutely disgruntled to have his dinner disrupted. Harry smirked.  _Should have taken me up on being my mate when you had a chance, arsehole._  
  
Of course, in so many ways they wouldn’t have worked. But at least Harry knew Malfoy didn’t give a damn about his fame, and he had been through a war that had to matter more to him than tormenting Harry did. They might have worked out.  
  
 _Well, except that I was wrong about the war mattering more to him than a chance to torment me._  
  
“Mr. Potter,” said McGonagall, and her eyes were as full of pity now as they had been when Harry first told her what was happening, “is turning into an elf, thanks to his contact with elf-shot.” Harry had to turn his head away, staring determinedly at his hands, as he heard the buzz of excitement growing around him. “He is also currently in the process of fading away. He needs a mate to connect his spirit to Earth once more. Anyone in seventh year or above who wishes to ask about becoming his mate, should—”  
  
Harry forced himself to ignore the rest of that speech, and the gasps of astonishment and pity and what sounded like excitement. He had known some people would be more excited about his fading and the opportunity to be with Harry Potter than anything else, but it still hurt a bit to hear it expressed like that.  
  
Finally, McGonagall was done making her speech, including telling the students about the list on her office door that they should add their names to, and how Harry would set up interviews with the students he was interested in on a daily basis. Harry stood up unsteadily and left the Great Hall right away. He knew his glamour was slipping, or at least people would convince themselves it was, and their hungry stares were a little harder to take than the gossip.  
  
He made it up one flight of stairs before someone grabbed him and slammed him into the wall. Harry spun around incredulously, reaching for his wand. He couldn’t believe someone would attack him  _now,_ right after he’d finally explained the strange things happening around him and the whole school had him on their minds.  
  
Then he saw it was Malfoy, and he realized that of course Malfoy would attack him now, because Malfoy was  _irrational_.  
  
“You had to let  _everyone_ know, didn’t you?” Malfoy growled into his ear, his hands locking onto Harry’s shoulders. “You had to make sure that everyone knew how displeased you were with your choice of mate.”  
  
“I didn’t even mention your name.” Harry shrugged once, flexing some strength into his muscles, and broke Malfoy’s hold without much effort. He laughed at the sight of Malfoy’s face. The change was mostly making him fade, but then other times he would find extraordinary strength added to his body, the way that he apparently had extraordinary beauty added to his eyes and smile. “You have nothing to complain about. You can just show up at the formal bonding with whoever I choose and speak your words of renunciation. No one else ever has to know it was you.”  
  
“So you’re casting me aside like so much rubbish.” Malfoy was huffing like the Hogwarts Express, and he refused to move his eyes that were locked on Harry.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes enormously. “I’m sorry, O Your Majesty. I thought I was only following up on the rejection that you’d already given me. Remember that one? When you said you wanted to be free and you wouldn’t  _enslave_ yourself to me?”  
  
“I didn’t use that word—”  
  
“Whatever, Malfoy.” Harry was already regretting letting the conversation go on this long. They were still too close to the Great Hall, and someone could have heard some of it. Besides, Malfoy didn’t deserve any more of his time. “Go. Be free. Let me deal with these changes that I never  _asked_ for in my own way.”  
  
He took one more moment to look at Malfoy, because it was probably one of the last times he would ever see him this close. He didn’t know if he found Malfoy’s features handsome, it was a little hard to tell when they were so flushed and so familiar, but Harry thought he might have been able to.  
  
“At least one of us should get to be free,” Harry added, and walked off, and left Malfoy standing there.  
  
*  
  
“How is it going, Mr. Potter?”  
  
Harry clenched his hands and stared unseeing at the Headmistress’s desk for a long time before he responded. He knew she didn’t deserve his scorn, or anything like it. She had been more than generous to him, including making the announcement and offering her office as a meeting place between Harry and his “suitors.”  
  
McGonagall wasn’t the one to blame for the fact that most of the “suitors” tired Harry to death.  
  
“That bad?”  
  
McGonagall’s voice was soft and compassionate. Harry looked up and managed to drag a smile from the depths of his being. “I think Milla was the best.” Milla, or Ludmilla Jenkins, was a Muggleborn Hufflepuff who would ordinarily have been two years behind Harry, but had been moved up to seventh year because she’d done well enough on exams despite all the Death Eaters in the school. Being able to concentrate like that made Harry admire her, and it seemed that she’d been a passive part of Neville’s resistance effort, passing food and information to the people who’d had to hide inside the Room of Requirement.   
  
And she was pretty, and gentle, and seemed not to be dazed by his smile and his ears. She had told him that she’d had elves in her family tree, and grown up around some of the portraits of her more distant ancestors. It was a good thing, one Harry hadn’t known to be possible, not to be dazzled by his beauty.  
  
But Milla had still looked at him like he was something…special. And asked him about the war in a hushed voice, and listened with wide eyes when he talked about it. Harry didn’t know if he could take a mate who pestered him for war stories.  
  
On the other hand, better than that than someone who was only with him for the fame, and Harry had the strong feeling Milla didn’t care about that.  
  
“You don’t seem happy about any of this, Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry lifted his head and found himself staring at McGonagall as though she was stupid, which he supposed wasn’t the best way to look at someone who was trying to help him, but  _still_. “I never wanted a mate at all, Headmistress,” he said, knowing his voice sounded stiff. “Of course I’m not happy.”  
  
“I meant that you’re not happy with the choice of Miss Jenkins as your mate.” McGonagall leaned towards him and considered him. “You didn’t tell me the name of the person who rejected you.”  
  
Harry turned his head aside. No, he hadn’t, and his own instinct to protect Malfoy was disgusting even to him. But he didn’t want to deal with the git’s whinging, and he would if he had told the truth. “It wouldn’t work out, ma’am,” he said. “They were on the opposite side of the war.”  
  
“Ah. And they rejected you because of the war?”  
  
 _Let it be that._ “Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“Well, Harry, I’m sorry,” said McGonagall, and shook her head. “In that case, I think that you should ask Miss Jenkins for a formal bonding date as soon as possible. Miss Granger told me that it’s the bonding ceremony, not—anything that would be inappropriate until Miss Jenkins comes of age, which will settle your spirit.” She gave Harry a pointed look, and it took him a moment to realize she was staring at something specific. He followed her gaze.  
  
Part of his bum and leg were hovering inside the chair, as if he was a ghost.  
  
Harry swallowed and looked back at her. “I know. I’m going to write to her parents soon and explain what’s going on. And—propose to her.” That was the part nearly making him ill, but  _something_ had to be done, and at least that would bring an end to the tedious procession of answering questions and nice fake conversations that he’d had so far.  
  
“I’ll give you the rest of the day to do that.” McGonagall’s eyes were full of pity. “Go and do what you need to do, Mr. Potter.”  
  
“Thank you for your help,” Harry said, croakily. But it was true. She’d been great about it.  
  
He stood and almost ran from the office. He seemed to float down the stairs, and he didn’t know if it was all the insubstantial nature of his body, or if the bloody grace that was leaking through his glamour had something to do with it.  
  
When Harry came out past the gargoyle, he stood there breathing for a second with his eyes closed. He wanted to go back to Gryffindor Tower, but there might be some disappointed suitors there. Maybe…  
  
Yes. Like it or not, he relaxed best now with trees around him, making the Forbidden Forest the best place.  
  
He turned, and smacked into something solid. Harry grunted and looked up. Of course his body would choose to be solid at the most inconvenient times, as well as fading at the most inconvenient times.  
  
It was Malfoy, staring at him as if Harry was a bug that had scuttled across his path. “Do you  _mind,_ Potter?” he asked in a frigid voice. “How much does it take to get you to stay away from me?”  
  
Harry saw no point in answering. He stepped around Malfoy and glided towards the nearest staircase.  
  
“Potter,  _wait_! Can’t you even recognize a desperate gambit to talk to you when someone makes one?”  
  
Harry tensed his shoulders as he stopped. He was stupid, he berated himself. Malfoy only wanted another chance to insult him. It was simply the nonsensical elven instincts that made him wait here and hope against hope that Malfoy had changed his mind, and he would actually do something that benefited Harry.  
  
“We need to talk.”  
  
Harry opened one eye to peer at Malfoy’s face. He was pale, but determined, and Harry decided he could be the same. “Yeah. I’ve chosen my mate, and we need to discuss the date of the bonding and the renunciation.”  
  
Malfoy looked as if he wanted to grip a spear and drive it into Harry’s side. Harry straightened, staring coldly at him.  _You can try, you prat._  
  
But Malfoy turned away, and rubbed his hand across his face, and sighed. “Do we have to talk about it in here?”  
  
Harry shook his head. He could appreciate the desire for privacy even if no one was around right now. “Come on.”   
  
He was aware of Malfoy trailing along behind him as they moved through the corridors, the silence and swiftness of his movements almost perfectly corresponding to Harry’s. Perhaps another reason his elf-ness had chosen them as mates; Malfoy could keep up with him, which Harry thought wasn’t the case with some of the other possible candidates he had on his hands.  
  
But he was tired of thinking like that, quite honestly, and he set his jaw as he walked down the corridor. He  _wouldn’t_ think like that again.   
  
*  
  
Harry walked until they were among the outer, looming oaks of the Forbidden Forest and Malfoy’s footsteps were shuffling, his breath coming faster. Then Harry turned and looked at him, making sure to keep his arms folded. If he was fading, at least he couldn’t drop anything if the only thing he was holding onto was himself.   
  
“All right,” said Harry. “So I’ll try not to make it too  _inconvenient_ for you, but I do have to get bonded before three months are up, or my chance will be gone because I’ll have faded too much for anyone to rescue me. What date is best for you?”  
  
Malfoy stared at the leaves on the forest floor. Harry snorted. “I thought better of you after the war,” he said, and didn’t bother trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Even if it was stupid of me to do, because you still like to taunt me as much as you ever did. But I did think you’d learned not to be a coward.”  
  
It worked. Malfoy fired up beautifully, glaring at Harry with a face like sunset. Harry found himself staring, and immediately shook his head, dissipating the clutch in his chest and the catch in his breath. This was the mate he wasn’t going to have, magic and elf-shot notwithstanding, and not all the soft blowing of horns around Malfoy would change things.  
  
“I’m not a bloody coward,” Malfoy said, his voice as tense as a hedgehog’s quills. “I wanted—” He took a step towards Harry. “I thought I was going to be free after the war, and finally have things I  _wanted_.”  
  
“You said.” Harry watched him without moving. As far as he was concerned, Malfoy was both a coward and a pain in the rear.   
  
“But I don’t want you  _dead_ ,” Malfoy snapped. “I was going—I wanted to show you that I’d grown up and matured. That was why I left you alone for the first months here. Why not? It was no effort to ignore you when I had so many other things to hold my attention.”  
  
Harry ignored the pain that felt like a new elf-shot splinter in his finger. Yes, his elf-ness was pained by the indifference of its mate. His elf-ness could go suck on a log. “You still do.”  
  
“Not anymore.” Malfoy stared at him. “Don’t you  _see_?” he burst out, when Harry went on looking back and not comprehending what Malfoy apparently wanted so much to show him. “Without you alive and  _there_ to do something, to react to me, it’s no  _good_! Not at  _all_!”  
  
Harry felt as though something had unfolded inside him and started breathing after being suffocated for months. Maybe it was the elf-ness again. “Fine,” he said. “You don’t want me dead. Then renounce the bond. I’ll be alive, and with someone else, and you won’t ever have to worry about me again.”  
  
“I want you paying attention to me,” Malfoy ranted on, apparently not giving Harry the compliment of attention in return. “I want to make sure that you’re actually seeing me for  _what I am_. I’m real, and here, and alive, and you shouldn’t only stare at your friends with eyes like that.”  
  
“Eyes like what?” Harry would have worried that the slipping of his glamour had started affecting Malfoy, but he had been the first other than Harry’s friends to see him without the glamour, and he hadn’t shown a sign of bedazzlement then. “Are you feeling all right, Malfoy?”  
  
“Eyes that just accuse and ignore and dismiss me!” Malfoy took a long step towards him. “I promised myself you would actually  _see_ me after the war, but how can you see me if you aren’t  _here_?”  
  
“So you had the chance, when my magic chose you as my mate, and you decided to throw it away,” Harry sniped back. “As per usual with your self-destructive choices, Malfoy. Don’t try to make  _me_ responsible for this, you berk—”  
  
Malfoy grabbed his shoulders and shook him. And of  _course_ they were solid enough for him to do that, when they were mist to Ron and Hermione half the time. Harry tried to get out of the hold, but it was impossible.  
  
“I didn’t even know how I wanted you to look at me,” Malfoy was babbling. “As a friend, or a rival, or someone you could exchange cordial nods with, or someone you wanted to protect and defend—”  
  
“But not as a  _mate_.”  
  
“I didn’t think about it, I told you!” This time, Malfoy’s hold was both weaker and more imperative, and Harry slipped to the side and around him without thinking about it. Malfoy turned with him, eyes on Harry, still trying to get his attention. Which had been the way between them most of the time they’d been in Hogwarts, Harry had to admit. He was trying to get Malfoy’s attention, like last year, or Malfoy was trying to get his, the majority of the rest.  
  
“But knowing that this is a way I could have it,” Malfoy whispered, “now I want it.”  
  
“You’re barking,” Harry said flatly, while his heart did a little victory dance inside him that he told it was  _entirely_ unwarranted. “What exactly did you expect me to think when you told me all that stuff about how you never wanted to be chained again after the war?”  
  
Malfoy looked at him as if he was the dimmest idiot in the world. “I wanted you to chase me.”  
  
“I’m not going to  _chase_ someone who wants to be free of me,” said Harry incredulously. “Especially when someone else could replace you as my mate. That’s why I thought you would be overjoyed to know that, because I believed you!”  
  
“Gryffindors are too trusting.” Malfoy shook his head.  
  
“Yeah, well, Slytherins and their mind-games—”  
  
Malfoy startled forwards again, and Harry almost drew his wand, because he’d had enough of Malfoy grabbing him and shaking him. But this time, Malfoy threw an arm around Harry’s neck instead, and pressed his lips against Harry’s.  
  
Harry felt as though someone had lit a fire inside his chest. He was fading back into solidity, he thought, because the tingle from the kiss passed down from his lips and through the fire and shot colored flames and flesh back into his limbs. He leaned in and kissed Malfoy ferociously, kissed him starvingly, and Malfoy moaned approval and kissed harder.  
  
Harry got him against a tree, delighted to be the one holding onto Malfoy for once, and reached down. Malfoy could say what he liked about wanting Harry’s attention and wanting to be chased and all the rest of it, but as far as Harry was concerned, that was only talk until he confirmed something with his own independent observation.  
  
And then he felt it. Malfoy was hard, and from the way he thrust into Harry’s hand, he wanted to be jerked off. That, at least, was a desire that Harry had no chance of misunderstanding.  
  
“So now,” Malfoy murmured, his eyes filled with low light as he stared into Harry’s, “you believe me?”  
  
“Shut up,” Harry let him know, and stroked him and returned to the kiss, which made Malfoy shut up whether or not he wanted to. And from the way he was sucking Harry’s tongue, he would at least have liked to moan aloud.  
  
But he didn’t get the chance. Harry was stroking him, and white light was spilling along his fingers, bleeding through the glamour, and the heat from that fire he had felt in his chest earlier was growing, and he was hard. He turned to the side and began to rub against Malfoy’s hip.   
  
Malfoy’s hand came down, groping, as if he wasn’t sure where Harry’s cock was but  _was_ willing to help. Harry nudged it away again. He was going to be the one to make Malfoy come, and himself come, and kiss Malfoy, and keep Malfoy silent, and all the rest of it. Obviously, leaving anything in  _Malfoy’s_ hands only resulted in disaster.  
  
There was a moment when Malfoy went rigid and tense against him, and then he was coming, suddenly, spilling into Harry’s hand with a cry that echoed inside Harry’s mouth. Harry chuckled, and rubbed his own cock against Malfoy’s hip faster. Malfoy was sliding against the tree, but Harry braced his sticky hand against Malfoy’s other shoulder, and he stopped. And Harry finished, triumphantly, against smooth cloth and the warm skin blazing beneath it, instead of on rough bark.  
  
They stayed near each other, recovering and gasping, for a long, uncomplicated moment after that. Then, Malfoy being Malfoy, he decided to make it more complex again.  
  
“That wasn’t the best I’ve ever had.”  
  
Harry decided against admitting that that was the  _first_ he’d ever had, at least as more than a kiss. He shrugged at Malfoy. “Yes, it was,” he said, suddenly absolutely sure it was true. His hands were still blazing, warmer with the white light rising out of their palms. “Because I’m an elf, and I have special powers to bring my mate off. You just don’t want to admit it.”  
  
Malfoy turned redder than he’d been during their whole snogging session. “Wanker.”  
  
Harry grinned and wiped his sticky hand on Malfoy’s hair. “Yeah.”  
  
It took Malfoy another second to figure out what he’d done. By then, Harry was speeding along the edge of the Forbidden Forest, keeping to the patches of sunlight, away from the dangerous dark areas, and Malfoy’s yelp rose like a werewolf’s howl behind him.  
  
“ _Potter_!”  
  
Harry peeked over his shoulder. Malfoy seemed to have forgotten his rules about wanting to be the one being chased, and was chasing Harry with a determination that looked as if it might hurt him.  
  
Harry grinned and sprang over a log. He could have turned back towards the school, but that would involve cleaning up. He could have run for a broom, but that would involve a faster chase that Malfoy might lose.  
  
Harry wanted him to win.  
  
So he kept running that way, and he was laughing when Malfoy tackled him to the ground among branches and chips of wood, and the only spell he had time to cast was one that would protect him against splinters before Malfoy slammed his mouth very firmly down. The _last_ thing Harry wanted now was another splinter that would turn out to be elf-shot.  
  
“ _Malfoy_ ,” he did have to moan when Malfoy started to reach into his pants in turn.  
  
“My  _name_ ,” said Malfoy above him, in a voice he probably wished was more dignified, “is bloody  _Draco_.”  
  
Harry grinned. “All right, Bloody Draco.”  
  
Bloody Draco kissed him again as punishment, and Harry gave himself up to rutting on the ground at the edge of a dangerous magical forest as obviously the plan for the afternoon.  
  
Maybe his elf-ness had known what it was doing, after all.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
